Reconstructing wintertime seawater pCO2 on the data-barren shelf of the western Weddell Sea based on summertime bottom water measurements

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Elise Droste (University of East Anglia)
• Wednesday 07 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
• BAS Seminar Room 1.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Birgit Rogalla.

The dense waters formed on the broad shelf of the western Weddell Sea are a source of Weddell Sea Bottom Water (WSBW), which transports anthropogenic CO2 along the continental slope to the bottom of the ocean. Our updated time series shows a positive trend of carbon in WSBW . To understand the drivers for this pathway for carbon sequestration, we need to understand the processes affecting carbon concentrations in shelf waters at the time of dense water formation, which is predominantly during sea ice formation in winter. Unfortunately, wintertime marine observations are particularly scarce in the western Weddell Sea. We are therefore testing a method that reconstructs the seawater partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) representative of wintertime conditions in this dense-water formation region, using carbonate chemistry observations made in WSBW in the summer. Results suggest that atmospheric CO2 uptake is the main driver of increasing carbon in WSBW , and thus that equilibration of surface seawater with the atmosphere is possible despite year-round sea ice cover in this region.

This talk is part of the British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• BAS Seminar Room 1
• Biology
• British Antarctic Survey
• Cambridge Environment
• Climate Science Seminars within Cambridge
• Featured lists
• Life Sciences
• Life Sciences
• ME Seminar
• Queens' College Politics Society
• School of Physical Sciences
• Talks related to atmosphere and ocean dynamics and climate science
• my_list
• ob366-ai4er
• other talks

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.